everything has changed
by wisegirlgeek
Summary: maybe sometimes you have to leave war behind and trust your horizons / annabeth's diary entry after the titan war. merry belated christmas.


_August 19, 2009_

There's that moment, you know, when you suddenly look into a person's eyes and everything is alright?

After everything that's been happening, I never thought that moment would happen. Especially not with _Percy._ He seemed so caught up with Rachel Elizabeth Dare (why does everybody use her middle name, anyways? That's not normal. Well, neither is she, I guess — for a mortal) that I never thought he would pay me any attention. Remember how I told you about how I kissed him last summer before the whole stupid volcano blew up?

I never thought he actually felt something from that. He didn't really seem to, anyways. And when he came back, it was SO obvious that he had landed on Calypso's island. But the thing that kept grating on my nerves was 'why?'. Why did he leave her? He could have stayed on that island, forever immortal with a beautiful immortal Titaness. But he didn't. He came back. I think it might have been for me.

So anyways, back to that moment. The war with the Titans ended yesterday and I swear that I couldn't be happier if I tried because PERCY KISSED ME AND IT FELT LIKE HEAVEN ON EARTH AND I KNOW THAT ONLY USING CAPITAL LETTERS MAKES ME LOOK DEMENTED BUT I'M SO HAPPY I COULD SCREAM!

SO SCREW YOU, RACHEL ELIZABETH DARE AND CALYPSO WHATEVER-YOU-LAST-NAME-IS BECAUSE I'M ON TOP OF THE WHOLE WORLD RIGHT NOW!

Yes, that was a gruesome killing of the etiquette of grammar, but I'm just so happy! The only reason that I'm a little bit sad is — hey, you know I don't want to write it.

Fine.

Luke.

I miss him. I know that he was evil for, like, five years but he was still my big brother and my crush. He and Thalia even felt like my parents for a few years. I'm really going to mourn him. He died a hero. He'll go to Elysium. I know it. I'll drag Hades up to Olympus and _make_ him fastrack his application. Or better yet, I'll make Nico do it! I have a suspicion about that kid . . .

Okay, so onto happier topics. I mean, how much better can you get than the fact that PERCY JACKSON LOVES ME? I don't really know.

So I guess I'm back to ordinary things.

I went back to the Oracle's attack today morning, to clean out her belongings since Rachel's actually alive. That mummy had a heck lot of weird things. I didn't even know that dead people could use hairbrushes. Hygiene is important, yeah, but she was . . . Dead.

I found a scrap of paper, though, that kinda has me worried. It was something like the last Great Prophecy, wording-wise, and it seemed positively ancient. It wasn't like the thing that Rachel said yesterday. It didn't rhyme or anything. It was simply — words. Nothing more, nothing less.

The weird part?

It was in _Latin._

I know a bit of it, so I was able to translate. It went something like this:

 _Confidit in homine in aeternum_

See? Just words. Not a prophecy. It means _trust in the human, not eternal._

I'm pretty sure that means that we should trust the half-human parts of ourselves and not our godly parts and godly instincts.

Well, I don't know why I wrote that. I guess it could have something to do with the next Great Prophecy, so I shouldn't worry. Hopefully, that won't be for centuries. And if it is soon — well, screw the gods. I'm done with the Fates messing with my life. I'm happy and I want to stay that way.

I'm not really sure where I'll go from here. I suppose I should go home, but I . . . need to work up the courage too. It's surprising, I know, that I don't want to go home after a war. But . . . that home isn't my real one, and neither is that family.

My real family is in Camp Half-Blood. Percy is my boyfriend, Malcolm is my overprotective brother, Connor and Travis are the annoying cousins, Clarisse is the bully relative that I hate. Thalia and Luke were my parents, my guardians.

I can't go back to one family while I'm still mourning over the loss of my other one. My days with Thalia and Luke . . . I can never get them back now. Half of me wishes I could. The other half wants me to be happy with what I have left.

It's hard to be happy, though. Even though a lot of us are celebrating right now the pandemonium can't hide the scars the war has cost us, both visible and not.

Thalia's eyes look a little bit broken, shattered like glass. I know that she really regrets not being there to stay with Luke as he died. She hides it, but she loved him. I can tell. I bet Artemis can too, but she doesn't really say anything.

Percy keeps looking over his shoulder. It's hard to catch, but I'm used to all the quirks of his personality and this one is new. His eyes are always watching every move every single person near him makes. I know he isn't very knowledgeable when it comes to hard facts, but I've yet to ever meet somebody with his sixth sense for trouble — getting in _and_ out of it.

Nico Di Angelo . . . well, he _was_ a complicated kid in the first place, and now he's even worse. Yeah, at the beginning his angry fits could be explained as teen angst, but now he's breaking out skeletons on a regular basis. You know something's wrong when you get used to seeing the living dead.

Everything has changed. I miss who we all used to be, but . . . I'll make the best of everything new.

- _Annabeth Chase_

* * *

 **This was meant to be a Christmas present . . . but I couldn't publish it on vacation, sorry. I've got New Year's presents for all my FF friends coming out soon :)**

 **-Dee**


End file.
